Kolomyya(Kolomya in the project's index)2013-05-2211 min · 6 stretchesYiddish 99%
Not online: the recording is held by the project and is not on Media Collections Online, YouTube or archive.org. Everything below is a paraphrase of a machine transcript, the weaker of this site's two transcript layers — see how it was made.
Summary
Camera file from the 2013 Kolomya session (2013-05-22). An elderly informant, not named in the index, recites and sings Yiddish rhymes and songs for Kerler and speaks of how few Yiddish speakers remain in Kolomya. Kerler tries to elicit a song from the informant's memory and postpones tales about tsadikim until the next day. The file ends with a humorous rhymed piece about the Jews and the giving of the Torah.
Stretches
00:00–01:16
Kerler and the informant exchange a rhymed saying about celebrating with food and wine. She then sings or recites a short song about the Jew's pleasures, sitting at the table, eating, drinking wine and being merry. Parts are unclear in the transcript.
Kerler asks whom one can still speak Yiddish with in Kolomya. The informant answers that there is no one at all and that this is hard for her. She adds that guests do come, some of whom still know Yiddish and some not.
The informant sings or recites a long piece, partly garbled in the transcript. It apparently includes a dream of a father, a kaddish-saying orphan in the synagogue and the parents' gravestones in the cemetery. She also tells of singing in the synagogue for a girl from Germany, who was startled and was given water.
Kerler briefly comments on the Russian and Hungarian words for water and vodka. He then tries to jog the informant's memory of a song about a girl from a town in Ukraine. She recalls a fragment about looking at the sky and at the Ukrainians and saying 'enough', and the two work at the wording of the lines.
Kerler says he must go home and wants to ask for more songs tomorrow. He also asks about stories of tsadikim. The informant says she will tell about the first rebbe and has told some already. They agree to continue tomorrow because the sound is poor here, and she remarks on Kerler's good Yiddish.
After Kerler's prompt about a song with a needle, the informant recites humorous rhymes. One is about women who have a fine husband at home but look for another in the street, and another about a Jewish wife who lit the stove on Friday. She also gives a rhymed piece, perhaps for Purim, about forty days and nights, Moses and the giving of the Torah, which the nations could not take on while the Jews could, and about the good Jews being content.